I don’t recall anyone suggesting we throw out that social contract, Shodan.
Actually, I think we would both suggest it under some circumstances. We disagree under what those circumstances should be.
If I understand the arguments of the other side, the proposal is that nothing should be done about the increasing tendency to invoke forms of bankruptcy that mean the creditors get much less of their money returned. We ought to allow this to continue until the banks and other issuers of credit cards begin to lose money.
My opinion is that, in general, those who are determined by a court to be capable of repaying their debts should be compelled to do so. This is true even if, currently, they could get away with not doing so.
Regards,
Shodan
That’s too bad. Your wrong. You have put words into my mouth that I didn’t say or imply. Like I said, I’ve come to expect this nonsense from some people, like evil. It’s just too bad to see another poster following in his footsteps.
There’s plenty of varying opinions here in GD. You really don’t need to invent boogeymen to do battle with. Wait long enough and somebody will say something that will outrage you. It’s not nessesary to put words in my mouth and invent fake arguments that I haven’t made.
I never said that:
Borrowers are stupid
Borrowers are dishonest
The credit card companies are noble
The credit industry would never twist or warp laws in their favor (Actually I haven’t mentioned or referred to the law this OP is discussing at all in this thread. Not once.)
I’m not going to bother. When the water is this muddy, it’s best not to go for a swim. If you two are so intent on making up all of this rediculous stuff about me right off the bat, I can only imagine how bad it will get if I start actually arguing with you about anything. I’d as soon enter into a debate with you two as engage a raving lunatic on the street in conversation. There’s just no point in it.
But why are they on the rise? Is it due to gross irreponsibility on the part of debtors? No; in that respect, the supporters of the bill are not merely wrong, they are wildly dishonest. One study after another has shown that the vast majority of bankruptcies are due to uncontrollable circumstances such as catastrophic illness, failed marriages and sudden unexpected loss of income.
And I have not said that people who can afford to pay ** reasonable ** debts should not be required to do so. Yet you keep implying that I have.
But it hasn’t even been established that there’s a real problem, let alone a crisis. As already pointed out, the credit and banking industries are doing very well even with the high rate of bankruptcy. It would be more reasonable to pass laws forbidding lenders to charge usurious rates of interest, to change their interest rates and charge huge fees virtually at will, to extend ridiculous lines of unsecured credit to the poor and to people with shaky finances, and to use deceptive marketing, while also requiring lenders to phrase their contracts in language ordinary people can understand and to disclose exactly how much and how long it will take to pay off a balance making a minimum payment. All this would do the nation a hell of a lot more good than denying the shelter of bankruptcy to desperate people.
And you accuse EC of attacking strawmen. :rolleyes: When a debtor is suffering severe financial hardship due to circumstances beyond his control, it is entirely reasonable for the rest of the community to require the creditor to forgive the debt. The community as a whole is better off when people with severe financial difficulties can get a fresh start. If creditors feel they are losing too much money because of this, let them adjust their marketing strategies and lending policies.
It’ll be a cold day in Hell before you ever catch me feeling sorry for a bank.
Who the hell said it did? I merely point out that the industry is doing damn fine, and there is no crisis. The number of people who abuse the bankruptcy laws is very small, and I see no need to make the shelter of bankruptcy difficult or impossible for more debtors merely because the fat cats feel they aren’t making enough money.
Well, sir, if you used deception to get me to sign a contract full of loopholes with legalese in the fine print that even lawyers couldn’t agree on the meaning of, if you can change the terms of the contract virtually at will, if you grabbed at every excuse to jack up my rate of interest or stick me with a fee, if after doing all this you expected me to pay you back $7000 for that $1000 and did everything you could to keep me in the dark as to exactly how much that loan was costing me–well, then, no, sir, I’m not going to feel the least bit bad about failing to pay all that you claim I owe when an automobile accident lands me in the hospital for six weeks and leaves me unable to work for a year. And, yes, I do believe I should be relieved of a legal obligation to repay you once I’ve established my inability to pay. (And anyway, if I’ve already paid you $2000 on that $1000, you haven’t lost $7,000–you’ve profited by $1,000.) Perhaps the problem could have been averted if you hadn’t tried to cheat me in the first place. This is not by any means an unusual example. Such things happen all the time.
But what the bill is actually meant to do is to make bankruptcy more difficult or impossible for more people, regardless of their financial circumstances.
I have no idea what your point here is.
But medical expenses can make it impossible for you to pay your Mastercard, particularly when your Mastercard issuer expects you to pay $7000 to borrow $1000. Dammit, Shodan, I know people who have been financially ruined by medical expenses, and I’ve seen the heartless way their other creditors persecuted (there is no other fitting word) them. The creditor doesn’t care why you can’t pay, he only wants his pound of flesh.
Well, here we go again. It has been demonstrated that the vast majority of bankruptcy filers are not just trying to walk away from their debts. Yet you keep trying, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, to make it sound as though the lenders have absolutely no culpability for the problem whatsoever.
But you see, it doesn’t do anything to stop rich people from walking away from their debts. Their protections are still there; and the burden for solving this “problem” is shifted onto the middle and working classes and the poor. The screws are tightened on middle and lower class debtors, and no concessions whatsoever are expected of the lenders and the rich. More of the risk is shifted from the lenders onto the debtors, and the rich get off scot free. You and the other supporters of this bill keep trying to deny or ignore that.
And that’s why I consider you dishonest.
I do hope you’re not suffering from the delusion that I give a rat’s patoot what you think of me.
Ditto from me, Debaser.
Guys, can you take your bickering to The Pit please?
True.
No, I think it is more along the lines of: what needs to be done is that banks and credit card companies need to be more responsible about lending money, just like you desire that people borrowing money be more responsible.
Thanks for the article. Did you look up the text of the bill? Because all I can find is a ‘sense of the Congress’ that the federal judiciary rules be amended to apply to bankruptcy attorneys (and non-attorney debt counseling agencies) the same rules that apply to every single person, without exception, who introduces documents to federal courts. I just can’t take an objection to that seriously or even as being in good faith. I think you don’t know what the actual proposed change is.
Indeed it is. So. So far we’ve got how many parts of the bankruptcy which are to all parties a good idea? The blanket exception for $1 MM of retirement assets, yes? The carve-out from an increased scrutiny over the Chapter 7/Chapter 13 issue for all persons below their states’ median incomes, yes? The increased restrictions on reaffirmation agreements, yes?
How about more? What’s your assessment on the education funds carve-out? Conversely, how about the changes to the rules for discharge (or more accurately, non-discharge) of education-related debt? The increase in priority of child support payments? Debt counseling?
There’s a lot of stuff in this bankruptcy bill that you’re just not being directed to from whatever sources you’re using. It is much more even than you think.
Kindly provide a cite that:[ul][li]The rich are more likely to walk away from their debts than the poor under this bill []That the burden for paying off debts has been “shifted” onto the poor and working classes []That most of the time, medical expenses are the primary cause of bankruptcy []That most credit card contracts are fraudulent (in the legal sense of the term - your foolishness about bankers as Simon Legree is not evidence of much beyond your own prejudices)[]That the “vast majority” of bankruptcy filings are not an attempt to renounce debt []That the rich get off “scot free” when they file for bankruptcy[]Etc. - practically everything you have posted is unsupported by anything beyond accusation.[/ul][/li]
I meant this kind of irrational prejudice:
And so forth.
It is a little difficult to debate a topic when 85% of one side consists of raving about the evils of an industry who has attempted to work the ruin of the noble poor by lending them money and expecting to be repaid. How dastardly - break out the torches and pitchforks.
Well, you will pardon me if I quote someone else:
Regards,
Shodan
Cite?
According to an ABC News article on the proposed changes:
Doesn’t sound like an improvement in the position of custodial parents to me.
Cute, but we’re not buying. It would be one thing if we were talking about repaying an honest debt. But we’re talking about repaying a debt multiplied by usurious interest. (Usurious in the lay, moral sense of the word, FTR, since our representatives have failed of late to maintain legal protections against usury.)
Tell me, how many pages of fine print was the last credit card contract you received? I use the word “received” because the contract is in no sense negotiated. (Or did you maybe call up the credit card bank and haggle over exactly when and how high they could raise your rates? Didn’t think so.) Did you even read all that fine print?
Credit card banks are taking advantage of unsophisticated borrowers, plain and simple, and it is absolutely disgraceful that by throwing around campaign money they’ve been able to enlist the “representatives of the people” in their scheme.
[QUOTE=Shodan]
Kindly provide a cite that:[ul][li]The rich are more likely to walk away from their debts than the poor under this bill []That the burden for paying off debts has been “shifted” onto the poor and working classes []That most of the time, medical expenses are the primary cause of bankruptcy []That most credit card contracts are fraudulent (in the legal sense of the term - your foolishness about bankers as Simon Legree is not evidence of much beyond your own prejudices)[]That the “vast majority” of bankruptcy filings are not an attempt to renounce debt []That the rich get off “scot free” when they file for bankruptcy[]Etc. - practically everything you have posted is unsupported by anything beyond accusation.[/ul][/li][/quote]
I will not provide cites for any of these. All of this has been well documented by opponents of the bill. You can find all this quite easily on the Internet by yourself, and I’ve wasted enough of my time on you. And you must care what I think of you, or you wouldn’t have bothered with such a lengthy post. You, however, are not worth my time and energy. Goodbye.
No. I’m a working stiff, and frankly I don’t have time to read and dissect 500 page documents. However, these professors specializing in bankruptcy and commerical law share my opinion that this bill reeks to high heaven (this is a pdf document):
I trust you’ll forgive me if I give their view of the subject more weight than yours. And now, like Shodan, you’ve wasted enough of my time. Buh-bye.
A quick favor, Lonesome Polecat -
The next time you participate in a thread but without the intention of either proving anything you say or actually reading the legislation you so heatedly oppose, could you let me know ahead of time?
I wasted some of my leisure time on the assumption that you were capable of honest and reasoned debate, and I would like to avoid doing so again. Thanks in advance.
Regards,
Shodan
Short background: college student, bad credit, poor until I graduate. I get at least one credit card offer every single day.
FWIW, I think banks are way more responsible about lending than credit card companies. I couldn’t get a bank loan today for a pair of shoes — and rightfully so. I could have 2 different credit cards by the end of the day, though.
So anyhow, here are 3 ways CC companies could be more responsible. I know it’ll never happen, but while we’re dreaming:
-
No credit card offers, period, to anyone with an income under, oh, $6,000 per year (I pulled 6k out of thin air). This rules out most welfare recipients and college students; the industry’s favorite targets.
-
No credit card offers to anyone with a credit rating under, say, 600 unless they are making over a certain income. (I’ll leave what that minimum income should be to the pros.)
-
No offers to any household in which nobody is employed.
These are not extreme guidelines, IMHO, and secured credit cards would still be available to those who are poor but are somehow able to raise the money for one. You can’t get over your head in debt when the opportunity is not offered to you, so we’d have fewer poor people ending up having to file bankruptcy. CC companies wouldn’t get screwed over as much as well, if they’d simply stop offering credit to people that they know in advance will screw them over.
I’m no economist so feel free to show me the flaws in my theory.
Instead of inviting everyone to wallow in the Pit (no thanks), why don’t you simply quote the language of the proposed bill which you think proves your point?
Why not? Because you don’t want to take your own advice. You don’t want to spend hours slogging through the minutae of the bill any more than do we.
You made the assertion (without citation) that the bill increases the priority of child support payments. You seemed to imply that a custodial parent should welcome this bill. I found a news article from a respected source which says otherwise. It’s your turn. If you can support your position, please do so. If you can’t, just admit it.
You are not to speak for me, nor are you to speculate on my motives. In fact, bankruptcy, including sometimes personal bankruptcies, is part of what I do for a living. I’ve read every single word in every version of the proposed bill each time it has come up for the past several years.
Why not? Because I asked about three specific things and alluded to the fact that there’s more and you ignored it all for a flip-off with a simplistic news article. Because the original text of the bill has entire sections complete with explanatory titles to direct you to exactly the issue you referred to and to the ones you ignored. Because it is clear to me that you have no interest whatsoever in learning or knowing what’s acutally in the bill, that you do not wish to argue it in good faith, that you are instead an ignorance-spreading partisan who is all to eager to argue the way you think you’re “supposed to” without doing any independent research or thinking whatsoever. That’s why.
I’m aware of your claimed familiarity with the bankruptcy bill, which makes your failure to support your position all the more puzzling. You are the one who has just made an unsupported assertion. Support it, if you can! Educate us, o scholar! Or did you just expect us to take your word for it?
Probably, he’s talking about section 212 of the bill
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c109:7:./temp/~c109CmDQtg:e95852:
There’s more, but…basically it says that people who have unpaid domestic support claims have priority in payment. As of now, according to 11 USC 507, child support and alimony claims are 7th in terms of priority: